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Domain registrar Name.com has added IPv6 support to both its registrar and DNS services, with its registrar platform offering support for the DNS security extensions known as DNSSEC from next week.

Sean Leach, Name.com's chief technology officer, tells The Reg that registrar customers can now submit both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for a host name through its standard web interface. "If you want to enable IPv6 for one of your records, you can click a button to add an IPv6 address, and we'll submit it to the registry for you," he says.

And if you're using Name.com's DNS service as well, it will automatically answer IPv6 calls.

Next week, users will also have the option of enabling DNSSEC, or DNS Security Extensions, a means of protecting against a well-known trick that allows attackers to silently lure netizens to impostor websites. Leach says Name.com customers will be able to make the switch to DNSSEC (on supported top level domains) by uploading their keys via a web interface.

But later in the year, Leach and company intend to simplify the process. "We'll offer a kind of one-click DNSSEC. When we host your DNS, you'll basically click a button that says 'Enable DNSSEC' and you won't have to do anything else. That's what a lot of people really want, especially small businesses. They don't want to mess with it, they just want it."

Leach doesn't expect much demand for DNSSEC initially. But he says this will change once VeriSign signs the .com top level domain. "Right now, it's mainly early adopted," Leach says. "But as soon as .com is signed, that's when things will take off. You'll see much bigger adoption, especially with how bad pharming and cache poisoning can be."

DNSSEC uses public key cryptography to ensure that IP results returned during a DNS query point to the corresponding domain name. It's meant to end the sort of DNS cache poisoning attacks developed in 2008 by security researcher Dan Kaminsky. Last month, the Public Interest Registry completed the deployment of DNSSEC on the .org domain, and the .gov domain is signed. But we're still waiting on .com and .net. ®